These are regarded as the nation's top, and most expensive, business schools.

5-YEAR MBA GAIN

YEARS

CLASS OF '96 SALARY

CLASS OF '02

Rank

School

total * ($thou)

as % of expenses **

to break even

pre-MBA ($thou)

2000 ($thou)

tuition *** ($thou)

GMAT score

1

Harvard

$162

115

2.6

$48

$195

$57

700

2

Pennsylvania (Wharton)

142

107

2.9

45

188

58

700

3

Columbia

136

102

3.0

45

202

60

704

4

Dartmouth (Tuck)

119

87

3.0

47

166

59

700

5

Chicago

103

79

3.2

43

170

60

684

6

Yale

97

80

3.0

38

130

57

690

7

Cornell (Johnson)

93

84

2.9

35

118

57

680

8

MIT (Sloan)

92

61

3.4

50

180

60

710

9

Northwestern (Kellogg)

92

68

3.3

47

150

59

700

10

Stanford

91

66

3.3

50

150

60

730

11

Duke (Fuqua)

90

74

3.2

36

132

58

690

12

UCLA (Anderson)

86

74

3.3

48

150

45

700

13

Virginia (Darden)

85

77

3.2

40

135

50

680

14

Carnegie Mellon

82

68

3.4

38

135

55

660

15

UC Berkeley (Haas)

74

65

3.4

47

136

42

690

16

UNC (Kenan-Flagler)

72

73

3.3

40

120

43

670

17

SMU (Cox)

72

70

3.4

32

115

49

640

18

Emory (Goizueta)

72

67

3.3

33

110

54

650

19

Michigan

72

59

3.4

40

120

59

675

20

Washington U (Olin)

71

74

3.2

29

98

55

660

21

Rochester (Simon)

70

64

3.4

35

127

55

640

22

NYU (Stern)

60

52

3.7

39

140

58

686

23

Indiana (Kelley)

54

56

3.5

33

98

39

646

24

Georgetown (McDonough)

48

41

3.9

37

119

50

655

25

Vanderbilt (Owen)

42

38

4.0

34

110

54

638

All figures are medians. Five-year figures are before taxes and adjusted for the time value of money. *Compensation after graduation minus the sum of tuition and foregone compensation. **MBA profits divided by the sum of tuition and two years of foregone compensation. ***Two-year tuition for out-of-state students.

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